Opposition leaders in Venezuela delivered a May 2016 petition to the National Electoral Council (CNE) calling for a recall referendum, with the populace to vote on whether to remove Maduro from office.[84] On 5 July 2016, the Venezuelan intelligence service detained five opposition activists involved with the recall referendum, with two other activists of the same party, Popular Will, also arrested.[85] After delays in verification of the signatures, protestors alleged the government was intentionally delaying the process.

Maduro continued the practice of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, of denouncing alleged conspiracies against him or his government; in a period of fifteen months following his election, dozens of conspiracies, some supposedly linked to assassination and coup attempts, were reported by Maduro's government.

Univisión announcer Jorge Ramos described his detention following a live interview of Maduro, saying that if Maduro does not release the seized video of the interview, "he is behaving exactly like a dictator".

Upon the death of Hugo Chávez on 5 March 2013, Maduro assumed the powers and responsibilities of the president. He appointed Jorge Arreaza to take his place as vice president. Since Chávez died within the first four years of his term, the Constitution of Venezuela stated that a presidential election had to be held within 30 days of his death.

“I don’t know if my vote was counted nor the votes of the people here,” said Marcelo Costa Andrade, 45, a government worker scrolling through his phone at what he hoped would be a victory party in Mr. Bolsonaro’s wealthy beachside neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. “I feel robbed.”

"We did it!" Musk wrote in a celebratory email to the company. "What an incredible job by an amazing team."

The saga took a bizarre turn that day when rapper Azealia Banks wrote on Instagram that, as a guest at Musk's home at the time, she learned that he was under the influence of LSD when he fired off his headline-grabbing tweet.

Banks said she overheard Musk making phone calls to drum up the funding he promised was already in place.

The men used a large tire and their bodies to block the road, though they allowed buses and vehicles with children or older people pass.

[158] After election officials closely aligned with the government blocked an attempt to summon a recall referendum against Maduro, Venezuelan political analysts cited in The Guardian warned of authoritarianism and a dictatorship.[159]

Following the birth of his twins with Ms Zilis, he tweeted: "Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis."

The coastal plains extend from the Colombian border and the Gulf of Venezuela eastward to the foothills of the coastal mountains, which are broken in the east by the Unare River basin. Farther east is the Orinoco delta, which opens onto the Atlantic Ocean through a number vlogdolisboa of distributaries (

The news quickly turned serious again when it was reported that Tesla's outside directors had retained two law firms to deal with the SEC inquiry and the CEO's plans to take the company private.

However, the opposition indicated that it would not roll back popular social reforms instituted by the PSUV.